What did you say BapchaMan? I couldn't quite hear you. Good point! My ears are not getting any younger or better.
Tam! My little SET is a KT88/12Ax7 amp. Very sweet!
I've been listening to the M100s. Wasn't loving the sound quality from a Sony CX90ES CD Player, so I stuck a FiiO Taishan DAC into the optical output of the Sony, ran the analog R/W outputs from the FiiO instead of the Sony, and WHOA! To those who say all DACS sound the same ... I was going to say come on over, but on second thought ... Suffice it to say, big difference ... all for the better.
As a "firm believer" in doing blind tests, I also admit to many times hearing changes with CD players, amps .. etc ...
In each case, a swap of equipment was made, no agenda attached, and it was immediately noticeable that a fairly large difference was being heard.
The latest was when adding the Axiom ADA-1000-5 amp into the system when we hooked up the switcher.
Both the Legacy Signature SE's and the M100's seemed to become even more open sounding, with better defined bass.
It's likely that the much higher current ability of the stand alone amp was the "cause" of this. BUT ... having heard this with CD players, DACS ... it's interesting. I could not demonstrate anything "scientific" to show meaningful results ... but my ears heard the difference.
AND ... we conducted our first AB blind test of speakers this weekend. The listener (who is a trained opera singer and has a pretty good ear) had no idea which speakers she was auditioning. In fact, she doesn't even know the names of any of the speakers I have hear.
All she knew was "A" and "B" ... I was doing the switching.
Before long, she was saying "A" or "B" when I switched speakers. They were level matched using pink noise, and we used music she liked.
She had a STRONG preference for one speaker over the other.
Everytime I switched back to "B", she was smiling. She loved "B", but only liked "A" a little bit.
I have done some of my own blind tests, with surprising results.
More on all this later.
